Advertisement
Hard Freight Café, an open mic event, will be held at 7 p.m., on Tuesday, Oct. 29, in the Titelman Study of the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts. Attendees are invited to read or perform their own work or music or share a favorite piece of poetry or prose.Participants will be invited to sign up at the beginning of the program. The event will include a kick-off reading by English professors Todd Davis and Erin Murphy. Hard Freight Cafe is sponsored by the English program and “Hard Freight,” Penn State Altoona’s online student literary magazine.
Davis, professor of English and environmental studies, will read from his eighth full-length collection of poetry, “Ditch Memory: New & Selected Poems.” Murphy, professor of English, will read from her ninth poetry collection, “Fluent in Blue.”
Davis’s writing has won the Midwest Book Award, the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Editors Prize, the Bloomsburg University Book Prize, and the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. His poems have appeared in such journals and magazines as “American Poetry Review,” “Alaska Quarterly Review,” “Iowa Review,” “North American Review,” “Prairie Schooner,” “Southern Humanities Review,” and “Poetry Daily.” In addition to his poetry books, Davis has edited three anthologies, most recently “A Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia.” He is an emeritus fellow of the Black Earth Institute.
Murphy’s awards include two Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, a Best of the Net Award, and the Foley Poetry Award. Along with her poetry books, she has edited three anthologies. Her work has appeared in “Ecotone,” “Women’s Studies Quarterly,” “The Georgia Review,” “North American Review,” “The Writer’s Almanac,” “The Best of Brevity,” “Best American Microfiction,” and anthologies from Random House, Bloomsbury, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Michigan State University Press, and Terrapin Books. She serves as Poet Laureate of Blair County, Pa.
Davis and Murphy will sign copies of their books which will be available for purchase.
The event leads up to the deadline for submissions to the fall 2024 issue of “Hard Freight” at midnight on Tuesday, Oct. 29. Up to three entries per student in the categories of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, drama, visual art, and multimedia work (such as original music, short videos, etc.) may be submitted online at https://altoona.psu.edu/academics/bachelors-degrees/english/hard-freight-literary-magazine/hard-freight-submissions.
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Titelman Study, Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts, Penn State Altoona, 3099 Broadway St, Altoona, PA 16601, United States,Altoona, Pennsylvania
